Everyone Needs A Companion
by Felyndiira
Summary: The Doctor has made a decision without consulting the TARDIS that impacts her, and she decides he's made the wrong choice. This story is how the TARDIS chooses a Companion of her own. Spoilers for the Season 4 finale & last 2 specials
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: The BBC owns the right to the Doctor Who characters, I'm just taking them out for a spin around the universe. Spoilers for "Journey's End", "The Next Doctor", and "The Planet of the Dead" set up this story.

Author's Notes: This is my first "Doctor Who" fiction ever. I've been a fan going back to the Tom Baker years, but David Tennant is by far my favorite :) Reviews will be most welcomed. I've been pondering this story for some time, and it's finally ready to be put down on paper, so to speak. Enjoy.

_**Journey's End**_

The Doctor activated the controls to send his ship, the TARDIS, into the Vortex. He removed his dripping wet jacket and threw it over one of the railings. He slowly walked around the console, watching the rotor move up and down, then leaned against the console staring off into space, deep in thought. He didn't even notice the rainwater dripping down onto the console. The TARDIS worried so about her Doctor, and he looked so sad. She reached out a tendril of thought, and found his defenses were down, and so allowed herself to eavesdrop on his thoughts.

Not so long ago, this very room had been filled with people, his friends, his "Children of Time" Davros had called them. Mickey, Jack, Sarah Jane, Jackie, Martha, his Human self, Rose, and Donna. Both of his hearts ached to think about Rose and Donna. He loved both of them in such different ways, and now they were both lost to him forever. Rose would live her life in the parallel universe with the Human self, and he did truly hope they would be able to find happiness together. But it wouldn't be with him, and that hurt. And Donna, full of fire and lip, always doubting her own worth, the most important person in all the universe, and now never able to remember any of it, unable to ever remember him and the great times they had together. He loved Donna as the best friend he had had in a long time, and he was still in love with Rose. He could never go and visit either of them like he could with Jack, Martha, Mickey, or even with Sarah Jane if he chose to do so.

This is the hardest part of having companions, letting them go, losing them. Most of the time they choose to leave for another life, returning home like Tegan, or choosing a new life like Leela. Sometimes they were taken from him - Adric, oh Adric, his guilt at the young boy's death never quite healed. Companions had brought so much pleasure and joy into his long life, but so much pain too. Was the pleasure really worth the pain? It was a question he had considered from time to time over his many years of travelling, but before he could come to a decision on the question, it always happened that someone would cross his path and he'd find himself with another companion. But this time - he had time to make a choice. He could stay in the Vortex as long as he needed to ponder the question. That is exactly what he did, leaning over the console of his beloved ship.

After an hour of deep thought, he whispered, "Never again." He muttered softly under his breath, stroking the console gently, "All I need is you, old girl, and I'll be just fine." The TARDIS hum changed to a sad one. Her Doctor mustn't be alone, he can't be happy if he's alone. This wasn't good. She allowed herself to be swept along in the Vortex and pondered this development, and considered how she might change her Doctor's mind.

_**The Next Doctor**_

Jackson and The Doctor walked away from the TARDIS towards their Christmas feast. "They break my heart", he had said, referring to his past companions while explaining to Jackson why he no longer had one. The lights inside the TARDIS darkened, and the hum deepened. Her Doctor was in such pain, feeling such sorrow, and truly thought that he would be better off without a companion. Didn't he know, didn't he understand, that they were her companions too?

_**The Planet of the Dead**_

The Doctor stood in front of her with the young woman, Christina, who seemed to be as full of energy and brilliant ideas as her Doctor. Oh, she would make a fine companion for him, "a perfect team" he said, surely he'll change his mind now after having whatever crazy adventure they had shared! If the TARDIS had a jaw, it would have dropped in shock when he told her "Never again." By Rassilon, he really meant it, he wasn't going to take on any more companions... ever?

The Heart of the TARDIS shivered with fear at the thought of never having another companion besides her Doctor. Oh, she loved her Doctor to be sure, but he was so much... MORE when he had travelling companions to run with. She remembered when he said all he needed was her, the TARDIS. But the TARDIS can't run with him, the TARDIS can't help him when he gets into trouble outside of her protective walls. Her Doctor was wrong, he needed more than she could give him, even if he tried to deny it.

The TARDIS decided that she wanted a companion, and that her Doctor needed a companion, whether he thought he wanted one or not. He made this decision never to have a companion and never asked what she thought about the idea. Well, she hated it, and for once, she was going to have to do something about it. Having made this decision, the TARDIS started a scan trying to find just the right one. A companion of her own. It didn't take her too long to find a good prospect, and as her Doctor sent her into the Vortex, she prepared to sound the Alien Alert alarm on the console. She wanted a companion for herself, and this one was perfect, and maybe someday, her Doctor would accept her as his companion as well.

Her Doctor might want to travel about the Universe alone, but his TARDIS certainly did not.

_**To be continued...**_


	2. Chapter 1

The Doctor turned away from the doors of the TARDIS; smiling at the image of Christina flying away in the super-charged double-decker bus. She was right; they were good together - but better to have one adventure and move on than to allow her to come along and lose her sometime in the future. With her recklessness, it might have been an unhappy parting sooner rather than later. Sometime quite soon, if those prophetic words were true, and he had no reason to doubt they were. Good thing he didn't have a Companion to worry about if something was going to happen.

He moved to the console and started the dematerialization sequence so the TARDIS would go into the Vortex and he could ponder the meaning of the prophecy. It certainly sounded like someone from his past was returning and their confrontation would result in his regeneration. *Drat, and I really like this body a lot* He ran his hand through his hair in frustration at the thought of changing yet again. *But maybe this time, I could be ginger?* They had just taken off when a buzzer sounded on the console. He moved over to the panel, and pulled the screen over. "An Alien Alert alarm for Earth? What'd you find, old girl?" Pressing a few keys, a series of symbols appeared on the monitor. Scanning them quickly, the Doctor frowned. "You found a Nodari probe on Earth? Well, the Nodari aren't ready for humans, and humans certainly aren't ready to deal with the Nodari. Lock on to those coordinates and let's stop it before it has a chance to send any interesting information back to their base ship." He pressed a few buttons, and the TARDIS landed. A quick scan of the location panel showed he was in the United States in early 2009, just a month or so after he had left London. Grabbing his coat, he headed for the doors, "Be back in a jiffy!" he called out to the TARDIS. The TARDIS hummed; everything was going according to plan.

The Doctor stepped out to find himself in the middle of a dense forest. The TARDIS had landed in a small clearing, and what appeared to be a hiking trail passed through it. He looked back and forth to the left and the right, trying to decide which trail he needed to take. Frowning, he pulled out his brainy specs and put them on to see if they made the choice any easier. He was just about to start "Eenie Meenie Miney Moe" to pick a direction, when a woman's scream came from down the right hand trail. He grinned, "A hint, much appreciated." and sprinted down the right hand path.

He only had to run for about half a minute to find the woman who had screamed. The trail had reached a small ravine, and a wooden foot bridge crossed over the river running through the ravine. Standing in the middle of the narrow bridge with her back to him was a woman in blue jeans and a red t-shirt, with shoulder length auburn hair. He was standing right behind her so he couldn't tell much about her, but he could see what she was staring at on the opposite end of the bridge quite clearly. It appeared to be a very large spider, at least 3 feet across, that was standing on the edge of the ravine, blocking the path. Its front two legs were waving in the air frantically. This was the Nodari probe the Doctor was looking for, and the waving legs meant it was scanning the woman standing in front of him. Moving slowly, he came up behind her while reaching for his sonic screwdriver. Putting the screwdriver in his right hand after changing the settings, he put his left hand on her right shoulder. She jumped, but didn't cry out, her attention totally focused on the spider in front of her. He had to speak loudly to be heard over the rushing water below the bridge. "On the count of three, I want you to step behind me, and then slowly keep backing up until you get back to the bank. Nod if you understand me." She nodded once. "Alright, allons-y. 1-2-3." On three, he stepped forward, holding out the sonic screwdriver and activating it. At the same time, the woman stepped backwards behind him. The spider-like probe reacted violently to the sonic waves he was sending its way. It moved back a few steps, then overbalanced and flipped onto its back, its eight legs folding in towards its body like when a normal spider dies.

The Doctor glanced back to make sure the woman was still moving backwards, which she was, with one hand covering most of her face and the other holding on to the railing of the bridge. The Doctor adjusted the settings on the sonic screwdriver and moved quickly towards the probe. Activating it again, he watched as a small circular opening in the stomach of the probe formed, and a metallic cylinder was ejected. Grinning he reached down, plucked it out, and then turned and started walking quickly across the bridge. When he reached the woman he said loudly, to be heard over the water, "Time to run..." and grabbed at the left hand she had been holding onto the bridge with and pulled her along behind him as he ran back towards the TARDIS. The sense of deja vu at telling a woman to "run" was almost overwhelming, but he needed to get her away before the probe self-destructed, and he needed to get the memory stick to the TARDIS for analysis to see if it had relayed any information about Earth back to the Nodari. The woman ran along with him, holding onto his hand tightly, not saying a word. *Probably still in shock. I'll make sure she gets back to her car before I leave.*

Just as the pair reached the clearing where the TARDIS sat waiting, there was the sound of an explosion behind them. They stopped and looked back, and a thin column of smoke rose out from the trees. The Doctor moved a couple of steps in front of her and looked back at her, finally taking a chance to look at the woman more closely. She was small, only coming up to his shoulders, and her face was pale with fright. She had the most interesting blue-gray eyes, which were wide staring at the column of smoke. She wore her own set of brainy specs, not quite as thick in the frames as his own, but each appeared to be a frame for each of her eyes. She was breathing heavily, and still clung to his hand like a lifeline. "The Nodari probe just self-destructed. I have its memory stick, so I can make sure there aren't any more like that running around and that it didn't send any information back to the Nodari. I'm called The Doctor by the way, and you are..." The woman finally turned her gaze to him, and the look of misery in her eyes caught his attention. He had expected to see shock or fear, but not misery. It was a look that reminded him far too much of himself when he got in one of his darker moods. "My name... my name is Jeanne, Jeanne McCormick. You're Doctor ...Who?" The woman's American accent reminded him a bit of Jack.

He grinned at the familiar question, "No, just Doctor. Why don't you come inside and rest while I check out this memory stick. Then I can take you back to your car if it's all clear. After a scare like that you probably want to head for home." He started to walk back to the TARDIS, still holding on to her hand. He put the memory stick in his pocket, clicked his fingers, and the TARDIS doors opened for them. Her softly spoken, "I don't have a home to go back to" didn't register with him as they entered the TARDIS. He let go of her hand and left her standing on the ramp, waiting for the normal reaction of running outside to look at the little blue box before coming back inside and commenting about "Did you know it's bigger on the inside than the outside?"

The moment Jeanne stepped into the TARDIS she was overcome with a feeling of warmth and affection that drowned out the constant misery she had been living in for the past two weeks. A soft, gentle, and quite obviously feminine voice seemed to speak directly into her mind, _"Welcome Jeanne McCormick. I am the TARDIS, the Doctor's ship. I would like to speak with you, will you come inside and speak with me, please?" _The voice sounded so nice, Jeanne nodded once and thought "_Yes"_, and saw a set of doors on the opposite side of the room begin to open. The Doctor had his back to her, and didn't seem to notice as she slowly walked towards the opening doors. The feeling of warmth and affection seemed to grow stronger the closer she got, and it felt so good, so nice, she wanted more of it. When she reached the doors, she glanced back once, and then stepped through. "_Follow me, Jeanne, and I will take you to a nice place where we can talk in private._" Jeanne felt a pulling sensation taking her down the corridor, and whenever there was a fork or a T, the same pulling sensation told her which way to go.

Meanwhile, the Doctor headed straight for the console and began to explain to Jeanne, who he thought to be standing on the ramp behind him, "You see, my ship detected this Nodari probe. The Nodari are a race of great scientists, with a great love of learning about other species in the universe. Unfortunately, sometimes they can be a little over-zealous in their research. They also hate to waste time, so they send out a series of probes to various planets of potential interest. Each probe gathers information about the life forms found there and send it back to the base ship. The Nodari then figure out which planets appear to be the most interesting and come for a visit. I really don't think you humans are ready to deal with them, so it's just easier if they don't hear about you quite yet." He inserted the memory stick into a slot in the console and began to scan the contents. "Excellent, the probe just arrived today and you were the first person it encountered. I managed to remove the memory stick before any information could be relayed to the base ship, and this one was the only probe sent here, so Earth should be just fine for now." He grinned, happy to know his favorite planet was once again safe.

He then realized that Jeanne hadn't said anything yet. There had been no comment about the TARDIS being larger on the inside nor asking him any questions about what Nodari were or anything. He turned back towards the outer doors to find them closed, and no sign of Jeanne. For a moment, he thought she had just left, but as he turned back around, he could see that the interior doors were now open to the rest of the ship. He was sure that the doors were closed before. "Oh no no no no no no no" he muttered, and moved to another panel to scan the TARDIS for life signs. Sure enough - 1 Time Lord, 1 Human. Jeanne had somehow wandered into the depths of the ship. Shaking his head, he took off his outer coat and tossed it over the railing. "OK, help me find her quickly please so we can get her home and get moving," he spoke to the TARDIS as he began to head for the inner doors. A couple of minutes after he had passed through them, the inner doors closed and deadlocked behind him.. Then the rotor began to rise up and down as the TARDIS dematerialized herself.

Yes, everything was going exactly according to plan. The TARDIS settled herself into the Vortex, and went to go introduce herself properly to the woman she hoped would be her new Companion, and to keep her Doctor busy in the meantime. With his sonic screwdriver in his coat in the Control Room, he wouldn't be able to interfere until she was ready to let him in on what was going on.

_**To be continued**_


	3. Chapter 2

Jeanne wandered around the corridors of the TARDIS for what seemed like a very long time in somewhat of a daze. She was surrounded by feelings of warmth and affection that had been missing in her life, which she had missed so much, that she just kept following the pulling sensations until she found herself in front of a pair of green doors with trees on them. "_Come inside."_ Jeanne reached for the doors and pulled them open, and gasped in astonishment at what she saw beyond them before stepping through, and allowing them to close behind her.

Meanwhile, the Doctor's frustration was growing as he continued to search his ship for the intruder. There wasn't any sign of her, and the TARDIS was strangely quiet, not giving him any indication of which way to go. *Perhaps she was trying to locate the woman still?* No, she knows everything that goes on within her walls, that can't be it. Finally he reached a 4-way intersection and stopped and sat down in a sulk. "Alright old girl, which way do I go from here?" Silence. He felt nothing from his ship at all. Now he was beginning to get worried. He realized that he had left that memory stick in the console, what if it had some sort of defense mechanism and the TARDIS had been damaged? He bounded back to his feet and ran back towards the console room. He was surprised to find the doors closed. Now, he was sure he had left them open when he started searching. These doors don't normally open or close on their own! He tried to open them and found them stuck, then realized they weren't stuck, but locked? "Well, no problem, just reach for my handy dandy....." his voice trailed off as he remembered that his coat was hanging over the railing in the console room, and the sonic screwdriver was in one of the pockets. "Please unlock these doors for me, old girl?" The continued silence from the TARDIS was beginning to disturb him. Then he realized that it wasn't completely silent. Leaning an ear against the door, he could hear the faint sound of the ship in flight and realized they had taken off! *Great, now we're roaming around in the Vortex with no pilot, and I'll have to try to get her back to the right space and time when I do find her.* He took off back down the corridor towards his workshop. Surely he had enough pieces and parts to put together a detection unit of some kind. *If the TARDIS can't help me find her for whatever reason, I'll find her myself*. If it seemed to take a little longer than normal to reach the workshop, he put it down to worrying about his ship.

Jeanne looked around her in amazement. It was a garden, but unlike any garden she had ever seen. There were several tall trees with silver leaves that seemed to sing in the breeze. The sky was orange, ORANGE, and the flowers seemed to be of every size and shape and color imaginable, but none of them were recognizable to her. They were so alien.... Her thoughts finally seemed to wake her from the trance she had been in, and everything hit her at once. "I'm in an alien ship, having just been rescued from an alien probe by another alien, and I've been invited to talk with the alien's ship? I must be dreaming. I fell off the bridge and am drowning in the river and am having some crazy death experience or something." She began to walk through the garden until she found a gazebo sitting on a hill in the garden. She froze in shock, because while everything else in the garden was alien to her, that gazebo was not. That was her gazebo, the one in the park where she and Michael had married. She slowly continued walking towards it until she stood inside. She looked out over the garden from the hilltop and was amazed at it's beauty, but it was haunted by the memories seeing the gazebo brought out in her. She sat down on one of the benches inside and wrapped her arms around herself. *What is happening to me? Am I going mad?*

_"No, of course you're not going mad. I brought in someplace familiar because you seemed upset by the unfamiliar. It was something attached to happy memories so I thought it would make you happy, but it has not. I don't understand."_ The feminine voice spoke to her.

Jeanne took a deep breath, "This gazebo does have many happy memories for me, because it is where my husband Michael and I were married six years ago. It was the happiest day of my life. Two years later, our daughter was born. Every year on our anniversary we came to the park and had a picnic in the gazebo to celebrate our special day. This year we were on our way to the park. Michael was bringing Michaela from pre-school, and I was coming from work. Michael's car was hit by a drunk driver, and they were both killed. If we hadn't had the tradition of coming to the gazebo every year, Michael wouldn't have been in his car at that intersection at that time, and they would still be with me. So the gazebo is also a reminder of very painful memories." Tears had started running down her face as she recalled this. _"When did this happen?"_ "Two weeks ago." Jeanne barely whispered her response.

Jeanne took a deep breath to try and compose herself, she had cried so much the past two weeks. "Who or what are you?" "_I am the TARDIS, I am the Doctor's ship, and I travel through time and space. TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimension In Space." _Jeanne looked around, "So, the ship is intelligent?" "_Yes, I am, and I can speak with you telepathically." _Jeanne rubbed her arms, as goose bumps had formed on them. "I'm speaking telepathically with an alien spaceshift?" "_Yes." "_OK, so what is your name?" There was a long silence before a reply came, "_I am the TARDIS, that's the only thing I've ever been called. I have a numeric designation to tell me apart from other TARDIS', when there were other TARDIS'." _Jeanne frowned, "How long have you travelled with this Doctor person?" "_Hundreds of years ago, we left our homeworld of Gallifrey to explore the universe. Now, all of that is gone and he and I are all that is left of Gallifrey. This garden is a holographic image of a garden on Gallifrey where the Doctor played as a child." _"It's beautiful. A hologram, you say, like in Star Trek? Can you appear to me as a hologram then, so I have someone to talk to?" There was another long pause before a woman's voice came from behind Jeanne, "Yes, I can." Jeanne turned and saw a tall woman with long dark hair wearing a white robe approaching her, smiling. "I am the TARDIS, this image is of the Time Lady known as Romana, who once travelled with the Doctor. I was quite fond of her, and I don't think she would mind me borrowing her image to speak with you." The TARDIS entered the gazebo and sat across from Jeanne. Jeanne reached out a hand, and whispered, "Pleased to meet you..." The TARDIS reached out her hand, and they shook hands. Both felt an almost electric charge when their hands met. Jeanne pulled back and rubbed at her hand. "You say there used to be many TARDIS', and you had a numeric designation. Why in the hundreds of years that he's travelled with you, has he never given you a name?" The TARDIS shook her head, "I don't know, he just calls me the TARDIS, or his ship, or old girl, or something like that. Maybe a name wasn't that important to him." Jeanne frowned, "Well, you deserve a name. How about, Ardi? I'm Jeanne the Human, he's The Doctor the Gallefreyan, and you're Ardi the TARDIS." The TARDIS smiled widely and whispered, "Ardi. My name is Ardi. Oh I like that very much. Jeanne, no one ever thought to give me a name before. Please, I would like you to stay with me and be my Companion."

Jeanne sat up straight, "Stay here? With him and you?" The TARDIS nodded her head, "The Doctor has taken many travelling companions over the years, and I've enjoyed them so much. But he has decided he doesn't want to travel with anyone ever again because he keeps losing them." She reached forward and took Jeanne's hands in her own, "You understand how much loss hurts. You don't have a life to go back to anymore - I know why you were on that bridge." Jeanne stiffened and tried to pull her hands away, but Ardi held on tightly. "You quit your job on Friday, drove out here to the middle of no where, left your purse and car keys in the car, and walked into the woods to that bridge for a reason. I know that reason." The tears began to run down Jeanne's face, but she couldn't deny the truth of what Ardi was saying. "The Doctor and I know what if feels like to lose everything that ever mattered to you, we've suffered through it on a massive scale. The Doctor thinks he's better off alone, but he's wrong, and I know I'm not better off alone. I want a friend who will stay with me, who won't go out running into trouble every time he steps outside my doors, where I can't protect him. I want a Companion of my own, and I want it to be you. Please, say you'll stay with me, say yes, Jeanne."

Jeanne stared at Ardi in shock. She hadn't told anyone of her plans for that weekend. She told her boss that she was moving away because there were too many memories here. She had been orphaned as a teenager, was an only child, and had no real close friends or family to support her after her family's death. She had decided she couldn't go on without them any longer, and had come up here to kill herself, just like Ardi said. She had reached the middle of the bridge and watched the river rushing underneath, and was just about to climb onto the railing when she heard the spider probe approaching. But if Ardi could be a friend, someone who understands what loss like this feels like, maybe...... deep down Jeanne didn't really want to die, she just didn't know how to live without her family; she hated feeling all alone in the universe. She wanted someone to take care of, and someone to take care of her, like before. That piece of her that wanted to live drew strength from the tight grip of Ardi's hands and Jeanne felt the ship's need for a Companion. *Oh to be needed by someone again.* Jeanne whispered, "Yes, I'll stay with you, Ardi." The two women reached for each other and embraced. The TARDIS sent waves of warmth and affection towards her new Companion, and Jeanne felt happier than she had been since the accident.


	4. Chapter 3

The Doctor was quite pleased with himself after creating his Human Detector. It was based on the same principles as his Timey-Wimey detector, which was an amazing piece of work considering he only had materials from 1969 to work with in building it. With the pieces and parts available in his TARDIS workshop, it was a piece of banana bread to complete (he never liked that "piece of cake" expression; banana bread is **so** much more appealing). Having completed his work, he went back out into the corridor and returned to the doors to the console room. Finding them still locked, he activated his machine, which detected the traces Jeanne left behind when she passed this way. Following the chirping being emitted by the machine, he began to follow it through the corridors of the ship.

The TARDIS knew she had kept her Doctor occupied long enough. "Jeanne, the Doctor will be coming here very soon, he will probably be angry at me for inviting you to stay, but don't let him scare you away from me, please?" Jeanne shook her head, "No, I feel I'm needed here, and it feels so good to be needed again. He can be angry all he wants, he's not going to make me leave you." Ardi and Jeanne embraced and Ardi whispered, "Thank you." When they pulled back, Ardi turned back towards the entrance. "When he finds this room, I'll need to leave, this holographic image might upset him even more. But I'll still be here, you just won't be able to see me." Jeanne nodded in understanding. She was going to be Ardi's companion, but that would mean some level of interaction with this Doctor fellow, he'd just have to get used to having her around. She wouldn't get in his way if he didn't get in hers.

The Human detector worked perfectly, although he could tell the track had circled around itself at least a couple of times. *Poor girl must be lost* Finally the machine directed him to a set of doors. He grinned until he looked up to see which doors they were. He recognized the green doors instantly. *Oh now, why did she have to wander in HERE?* He turned off the machine, took a deep breath, and opened the doors. The garden looked as beautiful as ever, and he felt the familiar tightening in his chest at seeing this image of his lost homeworld. He set the Human Detector down in the corridor, he wouldn't need it in here. He entered the room and began walking through the garden. There was a small hill that had an excellent view; he could imagine Jeanne being entranced by it and he expected he would find her there. He emerged from the forest in front of the hill and stopped in shock. "What?" There was a gazebo sitting on top of the hill. "What?" There was a gazebo sitting on top of his hill. "**WHAT?**" Someone had put a gazebo on top of his hill in his garden! He began to stalk up the hill.

At the sound of the loudly exclaimed "**WHAT?**" coming from the bottom of the hill, Ardi allowed her image to fade. Jeanne shifted herself in the gazebo to be looking out over the garden, making it appear she was alone in the gazebo and always had been. At the sound of the Doctor reaching the top of the hill, she allowed her gaze to drift towards him. For the first time, she had a chance to really look at him. He was a bit skinny for her tastes, dressed in a rather nice brown pin-stripe suit with a tie. He was wearing Converse though, which shouldn't work with that suit, but somehow did for him. He had a head full of brown hair that seemed to have a mind of its own. It reminded just a bit of Michael's because he used to run his hand through it all the time when he was thinking, and it'd end up quite the mess. He had chocolate brown eyes that were right now blazing with quite a furious expression - and it seemed to be directed at her. *Oh oh*.

"WHAT is this gazebo doing in my garden?" He spoke softly, but you could feel the steel of his anger behind the words. She glanced up at the roof of the gazebo, and then around to the sides, and then laid her hand on the railing. "You mean this gazebo?" She hoped perhaps a bit of humor would defuse the situation. His eyebrows shot up, "How many other gazebos do you see on this hill? Of course I mean this gazebo!" She patted the railing a couple of times before standing and turning to face him. "I would say it's just sitting here. Would you expect a gazebo to be doing something more active like cartwheels?" One side of his mouth twitched upwards into a smirk before he got it back under control. She kept her smile hidden and flippantly asked "Was that a smile?". Suddenly his eyes darkened and his facial expression shifted from anger to sadness. The Doctor remembered all too well asking that same question of Rose right after his regeneration, when he was trying to tease her into responding to him like before he changed. *Oh this is a smart one, she is...*

"No, I would not expect a gazebo to be doing cartwheels, unless it was built on the planet Tarnaza, where they animate inanimate objects as a hobby. I also would not expect a gazebo to be sitting here in my garden on my hill, because this is an exact replica of a garden from.... my home, and there is NOT a gazebo in it!" She nodded, "Yes, so I understand. Ardi pulled the gazebo from my memory and put it here to make me feel more comfortable. You can take away the gazebo now, Ardi, since he doesn't seem to like it." Jeanne took a couple of steps out of the gazebo and as her feet touched the grass of the hill, the gazebo faded away as if it had never been there.

"Ardi? Who the bloody hell is Ardi?" The Doctor's forehead was scrunched in a frown of confusion. No one should be able to manipulate the images in the garden except for the TARDIS. Jeanne replied very matter-of-factly, "Ardi is the name of the TARDIS. She lead me here and we had a talk, and needed some place to sit and chat. So she pulled the gazebo from my memories and we had a chat." The Doctor's jaw dropped. "The TARDIS doesn't have a name - she's just... well, the TARDIS." Jeanne shook her head, "No, she didn't have a name, but she does now. I'm Jeanne the Human, you're the Doctor the Gallifreyan, and she's Ardi the TARDIS. Follow me so far?" She pointed to herself and him as she spoke, and then threw her arms open to encompass the garden when speaking of Ardi.

*This human has the audacity to give MY SHIP a name!* The Doctor couldn't believe her nerve, he was just going to tell her off. That's when the question occurred to him - why had it never occurred to him to name his ship? He took a deep breath to calm himself down, "And what did you and _Ardi_ talk about?" Jeanne began to stroll around the garden, not looking back to see if the Doctor would follow her. "Oh lots of things. Mostly we talked about lonely life can be when you're all alone. She doesn't like being lonely, and neither do I." She turned around suddenly, "Do you like being alone, Doctor?" He hadn't moved from where he stood before, and now turned slowly. "Yes, yes I like being alone just fine. And now if you don't mind, I'd like to return to my state of being alone by taking you home where you belong." He started walking back towards the entrance, but Jeanne didn't move. "Oh, no that's not necessary. I'm already home, you see." The Doctor froze and turned slowly to face her. "What do you mean?" She stood there on the hill, with a Gallifreyan garden as the backdrop and said, "Ardi asked me to stay here with her, and I said yes. I'm now her travelling companion." The Doctor's eyebrows shot up and he sent a telepathic shot towards his ship. _WHAT?_

_"I am creating a suite of rooms for Jeanne on the opposite end of the ship from your rooms, Doctor. You may prefer to travel alone, but I do not. Since you have decided to deny me travelling companions, I've taken one of my own. Since you never found it necessary to ask me first whether they could come or not, I didn't find it necessary to ask YOU first if Jeanne may stay."_

Jeanne and the Doctor both heard the TARDIS answer his question. Jeanne didn't react, but the Doctor turned pale and felt his jaw drop again. He knew his ship was telepathic and smart, and they had always been able to communicate on some level before. But it had never actually _spoken_ to him before. "I don't understand, you've never spoken to me before, I never knew you could speak before, why now?"

"_I'm speaking now because I need to do so. I learned to do so when Rose and I were the Bad Wolf. I left a piece of myself with her, and she left a piece of herself with me. The ability to speak was part of what she left within me, but I've only just learned how to do it thanks to Jeanne." _Both Jeanne and the Doctor seemed surprised by this. "_Jeanne has a latent telepathic ability. My desire to be able to speak to her properly and her receptiveness to my voice allowed me to finally speak. She's staying. If I have to, I will not unlock the doors to the console room until you agree to let her stay."_

The Doctor looked around him in surprise. The TARDIS was speaking, taking action, making things happen, this wasn't like the TARDIS at all. This was.... "Ardi. She says your name is Ardi, do you... like that name?" "_Oh yes, Doctor, I love having a name all of my own. I have an identity of my own. I have thoughts of my own. Now I can express them._" The Doctor was both thrilled that his ship had apparently been able to evolve to a higher level of intelligence and knowledge, but also nervous. Having a ship that did what you told it to do was what he was used to - OK, they didn't always go where he meant to go but that was driver error, not the ship deliberating taking them to the wrong place. Now the ship could do things on its way, she wouldn't have to do what he asked if she didn't want to do so. She could go on strike or something. It was kind of scary.

The Doctor knew he didn't have any choice, if he didn't agree to the TARDIS' terms they'd float around in the Vortex forever. He took a deep breath, then nodded. "All right, she can stay - but she is YOUR companion not MINE. I'm not taking her sight-seeing around the universe, and she stays within the TARDIS unless it's an emergency. Agreed?"

Jeanne and Ardi answered together. "We agree." The Doctor nodded. "Well then, please follow me back to the console room so we can figure out where we are, Jeanne. It will take Ardi time to prepare your rooms. Hopefully the doors will be unlocked by the time we get back there." The Doctor led the way and Jeanne followed him, turning once to give a thumbs up back to the room in general, before turning around and hurrying to catch up. The Doctor walked swiftly down the corridor and she had to walk quickly to match his pace. He turned to glance at her, "Won't your family miss you while you're gone?" She missed a step and would have fallen if he hadn't reached out to grab her arm. Leaning against him for support, she looked up at him with unshed tears in her eyes. "No, no one at all to miss me, I'm all alone in the world now." The Doctor felt his hearts skip at her words. She understood loneliness too then. He then put a damper on those thoughts, reminding himself that he didn't need companions, they were more pain than they were worth. Ardi could learn that lesson the hard way if she chose to do so. He settled her back onto her own feet, and started walking again. "Alright then, allons-y!"

_Author's Note: Thank you to NonyMouse for your review. I wanted to respond to your comment that Susan named the TARDIS the TARDIS. While it is true that in "An Unearthly Child", she tells Ian and Barbara that she created the acronym TARDIS, I would counter that other time travellers from Gallifrey also have TARDIS' and refer to them as such: as examples, the Master, the Rani, and the Meddling Monk (who has a newer model of TARDIS than the Doctor). The word TARDIS is not a name unique to the Doctor's ship, but a name given to a class of ships used by other Time Lords as the series continued. It's sort of like an aircraft carrier in the United States Navy. The USS Abraham Lincoln is a Nimitz-class super-carrier. The word TARDIS could be the equivalent of the Nimitz-class designation for the ship, while the real name of the ship is the USS Abraham Lincoln. I think you're right that the Doctor never gave her a unique name of her own, in part because in the early days, the Doctor didn't think of her as being alive (reference the comments he made in "The Edge of Destruction"). However, I believe the Doctor's understanding of his ship has changed over the years. #9 and #10 certainly seem to believe her to be alive in some sense of the word and not an inanimate object. Probably out of habit, he just continued to call her TARDIS, and certainly now that she is the only one, it would work as a name. But for the direction I wanted to take my story, I felt having TARDIS be sort of like her race and giving her a real name would work better._


	5. Chapter 4

_Author's Note: Apparently I overwrote Chapter 4, so I am attempting to recreate it from memory. My apologies for the confusion at the later references to the tour of Jeanne's rooms that disappeared._

The Doctor was very glad to see the doors to the console room open when they arrived, and immediately went to the console to ascertain where they were, and found they were floating along in the currents of the Time Vortex. He flipped a couple of switches and turned a few knobs, uncertain what to say to the young women he didn't want there, and who he knew nothing about. Yet he didn't want to ask questions because then it might seem he was curious about her and he didn't want that. So there was a long silence as he walked around the console and Jeanne walked around the console room, looking around, brushing her hands up against the walls, the coral struts that lifted up high into the ceiling. Finally, one question popped out of his mouth that he couldn't resist asking.

"Why didn't you ask?" Jeanne paused and turned to face him, "Ask what?"

"Why didn't you ask how its bigger on the inside than on the outside?" She looked around and smiled, "Wow, I guess it is, I didn't really think about it, I was in shock from the spider and the explosion and everything that happened, and when Ardi spoke to me, I couldn't think about anything but following her."

Ardi's voice flowed into both of their minds, _"I have her rooms ready now, come Jeanne, I'm eager to show them to you, I hope you like them." _The Doctor cleared his throat, "We need groceries and you need to refuel, so I'll drop us down in Cardiff while you two take your tour."_  
_

Jeanne gave a half-hearted wave in the Doctor's direction and headed back out the doors into the depths of the TARDIS. The Doctor frowned and stared at the console, wondering how he could manage living with a companion he didn't want... and did she like bananas? They're good for you, full of potassium.

Jeanne followed Ardi's directions through a winding set of corridors that ended in a large set of dark wooden doors. Ardi materialized next to her, using the same figure as before. "Go ahead, open them, open them." Ardi's enthusiasm reminded Jeanne of her daughter's excitement at Christmas, and she pushed open the doors and gasped in shock at the beautiful bedroom before her. There was a four poster bed with a canopy, a comfortable sofa, lots of tables and chairs and bookcases, and even a pretended window with sunlight shining through upon a small flowering plant sitting on the window sill.

Jeanne looked around her in amazement. "You did all of this.. for me... so quickly? How is it possible?" Ardi smiled, "The TARDIS is my body, I can rearrange it however I like. There are lots of pieces of furniture in storage so its a piece of banana bread to furnish any room any way I'd like." Jeanne smiled at her and said, "Piece of cake." Ardi frowned, "Are you hungry?" Jeanne laughed, the first true laugh she could remember in weeks and said, "No, the figure of speech for something being very easy is piece of cake, not piece of banana bread." Ardi smiled, "My Doctor says banana bread because he loves bananas, they are good for you and have lots of potassium." Jeanne nodded, and then saw there were a couple of doors in the room. She moved to the first one.

It opened into a master bathroom with a shower, tub, and jacuzzi, in soft peach tones it exuded a relaxing sensation just being in the room.

The second door opened into an enormous wardrobe that was overflowing with clothes. Ardi said, "I moved some things that would fit you from the main TARDIS wardrobe, I can make you more things if you tell me what you like." Jeanne pictured spending hours playing dress-up with the old fashioned clothing she saw hidden in the mass of clothing.

There was one more door, which led to a hallway, empty except for a door at the other end. Frowning, she looked at Ardi for an explanation. "This leads to the library, I made you your own entrance, so you and the Doctor won't bump into each other. I thought you'd like to read." Jeanne moved to the end of the hall and opened the door to library and gasped in shocked. The TARDIS library made the one from "Beauty and the Beast" seem tiny in comparison. It was as if every book ever written or that ever would be written in the universe were in one room. There were comfortable sofas and chairs scattered around the room, and fireplaces to curl up in front of with a good book. Jeanne turned and threw herself into Ardi's startled embrace.

"Thank you, thank you Ardi, this is the most amazing gift anyone has ever given me. A second chance at life." Ardi held Jeanne as she cried some of the tears that had been held back for two weeks.


	6. Chapter 5

While Jeanne was starting her tour of her new home, the Doctor was pacing nervously along the Plaza. He could have called Martha on the cell phone and let them know he was there, but he had left the cell phone in the TARDIS and didn't want to go back inside so soon. Never had he felt so nervous about being around or in his ship! He continued pacing until he heard a familiar voice calling, "DOCTOR!" from across the way. He turned and waved at the familiar man walking towards him in his aviator coat. The two men exhanged hugs and the Doctor backed up, "Jack, good to see you, things have been quiet since the last time we met I hope?" Jack nodded, "A few Weevils here and there, but nothing we can't handle now that Martha and Mickey have joined our team." He was looking around the Plaza, "So, where is your new Companion?" The Doctor looked surprised and stuttered, "I.. I don't have one, it's just me and the TARDIS still." Jack looked surprised, "What you haven't found a new stray yet? That's not like you at all! What can we do for you, or is this just a fuel stop?" The Doctor shook his head, "Actually I need to do a little research, and I thought Mr. Mickey would be able to help me out." Jack nodded, "Sure thing, let's go down to the Hub and see what Mr. Mickey can do."

He led the way and activated the elevator down into the Torchwood Hub. Martha and Mickey glanced up from their desks as Jack led the way into the room. Martha grinned and Mickey smiled, but glanced behind him, in vain hopes that maybe Rose would still be travelling with him after all. "Martha!" The Doctor cried out and gave her a big hug, and reached over the desk to shake hands with Mickey. "What are you doing here, Doctor, some kind of trouble?" He shook his head, "No, nothing like that I don't think. I just need Mister Mickey's help doing a little research. Is there someplace we can talk, Mickey, with a computer and some privacy?" Jack and Martha exchanged glances as Mickey nodded, "Back in the conference room," before leading the way. He sat down and pulled out the keyboard, "OK, whatcha need?" The Doctor sat down and propped his Converse-covered feet up on the table. "I need all the information you can get on a Jeanne McCormick from the United States. She's from the Midwest, in her late 20's or early 30's with auburn hair and blue-gray eyes. She recently dealt with a tragedy of some kind, something big enough to be newsworthy I think." Mickey frowned and began typing, "That's not a lot to go on, who is she?" The Doctor sighed, "She's sort of travelling in the TARDIS right now and I'd like to know a little more about her without asking her for details, and no, I don't want to explain why I don't just ask her." Mickey shut his mouth, about to ask that very question. He started running some search algorithms and started pulling up newspaper articles. Most of the women described didn't fit the description, until he finally got a hit and frowned, "Do you know if this woman was married?" The Doctor frowned, "Dunno, could have been I suppose, whatcha got?" Mickey swung one of the monitors around, and the Doctor saw a picture of Jeanne with a young man about her age, and on her lap sat a small child. Mickey read from the other screen, "This picture is from the obituary of Michael and Michaela McCormick from Nebraska. They were killed by a drunk driver about 2 weeks ago on the couple's wedding anniversary. The mother, Jeanne, was meeting them to celebrate and travelling in a separate car, so she wasn't hurt at all. Is that her?" The Doctor nodded slowly, "Find me everything you've got on her and put it on a disk, and then wipe the memory on the computer for me, would you? And just keep this discussion to yourself, especially if you meet Jeanne." Mickey nodded, "If you can give me a day or two to pull things together, you'll have everything I can find." The Doctor nodded, "Great, in the meantime, I have some shopping to do while we're refueling." Mickey nodded and gave a vague wave at him, already working away on the project with an intensity that he probably picked up during his time working for Torchwood in the parallel world.

The Doctor asked Martha if she wanted to go shopping with him, and she jumped at the chance. As they went to the local market, he began to ramble, as he's want to do. "Martha, can I ask you a question?" She nodded, "Of course, Doctor." He sighed, "Well, let's say you found someone standing on a bridge in the middle of no where, well, not exactly no where, it has to be somewhere, but it's not someplace you just climb out of your car and walk up to in a couple of minutes. Anyway, let's say you find this person and find out that they just lost their family in a tragic accident. They didn't have any backpack, no purse, no supplies, no nothing, and they just hopped into a strange blue box and abandoned their life in the drop of a hat. Would you say there is a chance they were feeling suicidal when they were standing on that bridge?" The Doctor blurted the last part out, only having put the thought together after the information Mickey had provided him. He hadn't noticed at the time, being distracted by a rather large metallic spider-shaped probe, that Jeanne wasn't dressed for hiking and was very out of place standing on that bridge. Martha looked at him in surprise and replied, "Uhm. Why do I have the feeling this isn't a hypothetical situation we're talking about here?" He sighed, "Martha, I have a woman who is now living on my ship that I found in exactly that situation. The TARDIS has adopted her as a Companion of her own because I've decided not to take any new travelling companions of my own. We were investigating a Nodari probe the TARDIS found in America and found her standing on a bridge on a hiking trail in the middle of nowhere. No supplies, not dressed for hiking at all. I just had Mickey run a search on her, and turns out her family died two weeks ago in an accident. I know what it's like to suffer a great loss like that, and it can make some people snap. The TARDIS seems to like her, and I guess I don't mind her staying, but I'm worried if it's a bad thing to bring her along if she's... well, troubled." Martha frowned, and watched as the Doctor starting filling his cart with every flavor of marmelade available in the store. "Well, Doctor, I'm not that kind of Doctor, but I think if she's formed an attachment to the TARDIS, taking her away might cause more harm than help." He nodded, "That's sort of what I thought too." He moved on to the bananas in the produce section. Martha smiled, recognizing his normal shopping pattern.


	7. Chapter 6

The Doctor and Martha checked out with his marmalade and bananas. Martha had to pay because of course the Doctor didn't have any cash on him that he could find. As they walked back towards the Plaza, the Doctor said, "I think I'd like you and Jack and Mickey to meet Jeanne, and I know you're not that kind of Doctor, but if you see any signs of anything disturbing, if you'd let me know. We're going to be staying for a couple of days, how about you three come over for dinner tonight in the TARDIS?" Martha nodded, and as they reached the Plaza, she headed towards the hub entrance. "I'll tell the guys and you can tell the TARDIS and Jeanne that we're coming. 7 o'clock all right?" He nodded, and snapped his fingers to open the TARDIS doors. He was humming softly to himself as he walked in, and he headed to the kitchen to drop off his purchases. "We're going to be having company for dinner tonight; Jack and Mickey and Martha. Do you think you could whip up something nice for the 5 of us to eat? I'd like to introduce them to Jeanne... if you don't mind." He suddenly realized it might have been rude for him to invite guests to meet her Companion. The ship hummed happily, "_We would like that. I will move a dining room closer to the Console Room for you._" The Doctor grinned, "Brilliant, you are! They'll be here about 7." He finished unloading the dozen jars of marmalade and the bananas and helped himself to one before setting the rest on the counter. He headed for the console room to check on the refueling and asked as casually as he could, "So, what have you and Jeanne been up to while I was out?" The TARDIS hummed again, "_I've been showing her the suite of rooms I prepared for her. She likes them very much! She is very happy here, and it is so nice not to be all alone while you're gone._" The Doctor frowned, it had never occurred to him that the TARDIS would feel lonely when he and his Companions had left her for their numerous adventures. He grinned, "Well you certainly won't be alone tonight with our little dinner party. I think I'm going to go read in the library until they arrive." He headed for the library, noting that there were a couple of extra turns. "_I moved the Library around just a bit so that Jeanne would have easier access to it._" The Doctor nodded, and re-checked his shielding, as that thought must have leaked out for her to hear. He was so relaxed after his shopping trip, he had lost his focus. This was going to be quite the adjustment to make. When he reached the library he picked up one of his favorite books, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and dropped into a chair, throwing his legs over one arm and putting a pillow behind his back, he let himself get lost in the pages of the book.

Meanwhile Jeanne was exploring the variety of clothes stored away in the wardrobe, she could play dress-up for days on end, there were clothes from different time periods in Earth's history as well as some that had to be alien. It was so exciting to her. She held up a unusual looking pink frock and looked at herself in the mirror, exclaiming, "Oh won't Michael think this is lovely!" It took a couple of seconds for what she said to sink into her own mind, and her mood went from joyous to sad in an instant. *Michael won't ever be able to see this. I'm only seeing this because Michael is gone.* She re-hung the dress in the wardrobe and went back out to the bedroom and climbed up onto the soft bed. The tears had just begun to flow when she heard Ardi moving about the room. "Oh Jeanne, my Doctor just returned and we're having guests tonight for dinner!" She moved around the bed and saw Jeanne was crying. "Oh Jeanne, my Jeanne, what's wrong? Aren't you happy with your room any more?" Jeanna sat up and rubbed at her eyes, "No, Ardi, it's not that. It's simply beautiful and amazing and I can't believe it is all for me. I was just wishing that Michael could be here to see it." Ardi climbed up to sit on the bed next to her. "Michael was your husband who died. You loved him very much, didn't you?" Jeanne nodded, and another tear dropped down her check. Ardi nodded, "My Doctor has lost people he has loved too. The girl Rose that I told you about before, she touched his hearts like only a couple of people have before. I think it broke both of his hearts to have to leave her behind again, especially when he had to leave Donna behind as well and it left him all alone. They are both still alive, but it's as if they are dead to him because he can never see either of them again." Jeanne glanced at her, "Two hearts?" Ardi nodded, "He is a Time Lord from the planet of Gallifrey, and while he may look human to you, he is different in many ways. One way he is similar is that he has kindness in his hearts. Especially this incarnation, he is probably the most emotional of the 10." Jeanne continued to stare at her, "10? What on Earth do you mean?" Ardi smiled, "One of the abilities of a Time Lord is to regenerate his body when gravely injured. A Time Lord normally has a total of 12 reincarnations, or 13 lives, available to him. My Doctor is currently on his 10th incarnation. Each new body is different both physically and in personality. His first was very grouchy a lot of the time. The fourth was very silly at times. The ninth was hurt and angry, that was right after the Time War that destroyed his homeworld and his race. This one is probably the most emotional of them all so far."

Jeanne found it very confusing to think of someone having 10 different faces and personalities. She spoke slowly, "I'd like to learn more about your Doctor and these past versions of himself. Maybe you could show me sometime. Right now though, I think I'd like to rest if we're going to have company tonight. Will you wake me about an hour before they arrive so I can dress?" Ardi nodded and climbed off the bed while Jeanne lay back down. "Thank you, Ardi. You've saved me from myself and I'm so grateful. I'll do my best to be the best Companion ever." Ardi smiled and waved before fading away. Jeanne rolled over and allowed the tears to fall. She missed her family so much, there was such a large hole in her heart where they were. But for the first time since the accident, she felt a glimmer of hope that maybe there was a future for her after all. Her life didn't end when her family's did - it didn't have to anyway. She was definitely needed here by Ardi. She drifted off to sleep, enjoying the feeling of being needed again.

Jeanne awoke when a chime sounded, "_Jeanne, it is 6 o'clock and our guests will be arriving in an hour._" Jeanne sat up and stretched. She felt more rested than she had since the accident, and hadn't had a single bad dream during her nap. She climbed down from the bed and hurried into the wardrobe. "How fancy a dinner party is this going to be, Ardi?" "_Not that fancy, it's just my Doctor's friends Martha, Mickey, and Jack. I think a nice dress or blouse and slacks would be fine._" Jeanne wasn't sure how much real fashion knowledge Ardi had, and decided to go for a soft blue dress that brought out the blue in her eyes. It was modest, but stylish. She brought the dress out and found underwear to match and carried the whole thing into the bathroom. She wanted to take a hot soaking bath, and make a good impression on the Doctor's friends. As she undressed, Ardi started the water running and Jeanne poured in some bubble bath. "Tell me about these friends of the Doctor, would you Ardi?" After she climbed into the tub, Ardi appeared in the room wearing a robe. Jeanne giggled at the sight. Ardi sat on the dressing bench and began to speak. "Well, Mickey was Rose's boyfriend when the Doctor and Rose first met, back in his ninth incarnation." Jeanne interjected, "That was the hurt and angry version, right?" Ardi nodded. "When they returned to visit Rose's mother, Mickey went with them when they left. We accidentally slipped into a parallel universe, and Mickey chose to stay there. He saw that he had lost Rose's heart to the Doctor and wanted to make a new life for himself there. After we saved the Earth from the Daleks and put the planet back in place, he choose to stay here in this universe as there wasn't anything left for him back in the parallel universe any more." Jeanne looked at Ardi in awe. "You mean YOU were the one who saved the Earth?" Ardi nodded again, "I helped, everyone helped, my Doctor's Children of Time. Anyway, Martha travelled with this incarnation for about a year or so and is a Doctor herself. Very bright woman, she's done work for both UNIT and Torchwood." Jeanne interjected again, "Who's that?" Ardi smiled, "UNIT and Torchwood are two organizations here in England that protect the Earth from alien invasions, but in different ways. The Doctor used to work for UNIT during his third incarnation when he was exiled to Earth for a time and couldn't travel. Jack works for Torchwood and is the leader of the office here in Cardiff that monitors the rift that I'm using to refuel myself. He is... well, Jack is a bit difficult to explain exactly. Rose and I sort of, well, broke him." Jeanne sat up in the tub, "Broke him? What do you mean?" Ardi looked very uncomfortable and actually squirmed a bit on her seat. "Well, you see, my Doctor, the ninth incarnation of him, Rose and Jack were on a space station over Earth in the future, facing a Dalek invasion. The Doctor knew it was a lost cause and sent me and Rose back to London in her own time, to keep her safe and me out of the hands of the Daleks. I didn't like it at all, but understood I am too powerful to allow myself to be captured. He had promised Rose's mother that he would keep her safe, and so sent her home. Rose liked it even less. She remembered something that my Doctor had done before, accessing my Heart to change someone. She thought if she could look into my Heart, she could talk to me and we'd go back to the Doctor and save him." Jeanne interrupted, "What exactly is your Heart?" Ardi smiled, "The Heart of the TARDIS is a piece of the Time Vortex. It allows me to connect to it and travel through it. Anyway, Rose and Mickey tore open the Console to expose my heart, and she looked into it, and I looked into her. It hurt, but it worked. That is when we merged to form Bad Wolf. We went back and destroyed the Daleks and saved the Doctor. Jack had been killed defending the station, and we brought him back to life. But we couldn't control the power properly and instead of just bringing him back to life we brought him back - well, kind of permanently." She looked down, ashamed of what she had done. Jeanne blinked, "What do you mean permanently? Like, you made him immortal?" Ardi nodded, "Jack won't age, or if he does it's at a very slow rate, and he cannot die. Oh he dies, but then he comes back to life again, injuries all gone, just like back on the station. The Doctor and I can both sense the difference in him, he is a blip in the time line that should never have happened. The power was consuming Rose, and so my Doctor took the power of the Vortex away from Rose and gave it back to me. The cost was his life, and that is when he regenerated into his current incarnation. When he gave the energy back to me, there was a bit of Rose mixed up within it. That has been lying dormant within me until you came along."

Jeanne began to wash herself, amazed at all of this information. "I feel like I've dropped right into the middle of a science-fiction show like Star Trek or something." Ardi smiled, "Rose used to tease my Doctor about not being Spock enough for an alien." Jeanne laughed and finished up her bath. Ardi stood up and brought her over a large fluffy towel, holding it front of her as she rose from the tub. As Jeanne wrapped the towel around herself, Ardi said, "I need to go finish dinner. When you're ready to go, you can follow the path to the Console Room to greet our guests, all right?" Jeanne nodded, and Ardi faded away. She moved over to the dressing table, and found a mixture of all kinds of makeup available. She brushed out her hair and began to plan her makeup as she got dressed. She put a towel around her shoulders to protect the dress from any accidents and applied her makeup. She sent out a mental call to Ardi, "_How much longer do I have?_" and Ardi replied, "_15 more minutes_". She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked pretty good if she did say so herself. The dress did set off her eyes, and the makeup emphasized them just a little. She had lost a bit of weight in the past couple of weeks, but the dress fit her to perfection. Heading back to her room, she found a matching pair of shoes and then left her room. Once again the slight tugging sensation guided her towards the Console Room. She got there to see the Doctor flipping switches and talking to his ship, "Primary cells are all charged, let's go ahead and get all of the backups charged as well, no telling when we'll be back or what we'll run into in the meantime." He glanced up as she entered the room and he froze for a moment. It reminded him of so many times that Rose had come out to show him an outfit before they left the TARDIS for one of their adventures, he had to catch his breath. He walked over towards her smiling, "Jeanne, I hope you don't mind me inviting my friends to dinner tonight, I know it was short notice. I figured if you're going to be travelling on the TARDIS you might as well meet some of my friends, although I don't know how often we'll see them as we're travelling all over time and space and all that and I'm rambling again so I'll be quiet now and by the way, you look very nice, Ardi provided you a good wardrobe I hope you found everything you needed." He finally stopped talking only when one of his own hands covered his mouth. He was nervous, really nervous, about Jeanne meeting his friends. He was also nervous about having checked up on her and having Mickey research her. It felt now like an invasion of her privacy but he was only trying to protect his beloved ship... and himself. Just then there was a sound from the door, and the doors opened to reveal three people walking into the Console Room.

The black woman in the middle was tucking a key back into her blouse, so she must have a key to the TARDIS, and was obviously Martha. Jeanne looked back and forth between the two men trying to figure out which was Jack and which was Mickey. She had just decided that Mickey was the tall dark haired man when the Doctor stepped forward to make introductions. "Martha Jones, this is Jeanne McCormick, lately of America." Jeanne automatically reached out a hand to shake the woman's hand. The Doctor continued, "This young man is Mickey Smith from London and Torchwood's computer technician." He indicated the young black man, and she reached out to shake his hand. That meant the tall dark haired man was Jack. She turned to meet him but before the Doctor could continue his introductions, Jack stuck out his hand and said in a strong American voice, "Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Torchwood here in Cardiff, and I'm so very pleased to meet you, Ms. McCormick." She already had stuck out her hand to be shaken, but Jack bent over and pulled her hand up to kiss the back of it. As soon as he touched her hand, she could feel just a taste of the wrongness of his existence, a hint of what Ardi must have meant when she said she could sense him. As he rose back up, he winked at her. Winked? *Oh my god, was he flirting with her?* That felt even more wrong than his existance. Even as the Doctor said, "Not now, Jack", Jeanne extracted her hand and moved back, putting herself slightly behind the Doctor so he was between her and Jack. Both Jack and the Doctor rose their eyebrows in surprise at her reaction. The Doctor turned and took her hand, putting it over his arm. She was trembling slightly. "If you'd like to follow us to the dining room, I believe dinner is about to be served." Jack offered an arm to Martha, and Mickey quickly did the same on the other side. Laughing, she took each of their arms and the three of them followed the first two down the corridor to the dining room. The Doctor found himself patting her hand in comfort as it rested in the crook of his arm, and he gave her one of his most pleasant smiles. She eventually returned his smile tentatively by the time they reached the open doors to the dining room and had stopped trembling.

The TARDIS had prepared roast beef with roasted potatoes, salad, mixed vegetables, and a large chocolate cake with a layer of bananas sitting on top of the layer of frosting. The Doctor sat at the head of the small table with Jeanne to his left and Martha to his right. Mickey headed to Jeanne's side of the table, forcing Jack to sit next to Martha. All three of them had obviously picked up on the negative reaction Jeanne had towards Jack. They began to pass around the food and filled up their plates. Mickey was the first to speak, "So Jeanne, what did you do in America before coming aboard the TARDIS?" Jeanne paused in the bite she was about to take. "I had been working as an accountant. I had just left my job when the Doctor and I crossed paths." She finished her bite when Martha asked, "Do you have any family you'll be visiting from time to time?" Jeanne froze in her chair, and looked up at Martha with a wide-eyed look of fear and sadness. "No, no family to speak of, there is just me in the world now." She looked down at her plate, *Oh Ardi, I wish you were here to help me, not just in my mind! This is so hard. I want his friends to like me, but if they know what I was going to do, maybe they won't*. Mickey piped in, "Well, that's the way it is for me too. My family is all gone here now, or living in the parallel universe where I can't see them no more." Jack said softly, "The Torchwood team has become my family, along with the others I know who know the Doctor. Sometimes you make your own family through connections like that when you don't have anyone else." Jeanne glanced up at him. His voice and tone were very different from the flirtacious man from the Console Room. She nodded and replied just as softly, "Yes, I think you might be right. Ardi has told me many wonderful things about the Doctor's Children of Time, which are sort of his family now." She glanced towards him, and found him looking at her very thoughtfully. Before anyone could ask, the Doctor said, "Yes, the TARDIS now has a real name. Her name is Ardi." He smiled at Jeanne, and Jeanne smiled back. She had wondered if he resented someone else naming the ship he had travelled in for so long. It appeared he was not, and that was such a relief to her. The tension in the room faded and conversation turned much lighter as they enjoyed the fine meal that the TARDIS had prepared for them.


	8. Chapter 7

The conversation went on while they enjoyed cheesecake for desert. Mickey glanced over at Martha and said, "I wonder if I still have the high score on the pinball game in the Game Room?" Martha laughed, "Are you kidding? I had that score topped the first week I was here!" Mickey raised an eyebrow, "Well then I think it's time we had a head to head match-up, whatcha say?" She nodded and the two of them stood up and started to head for the Game Room. Jeanne turned to the Doctor and said softly, "Why don't you join them, and give me a chance to get to know Captain Jack a little better?" The thought had been suggested by Ardi, and Jeanne was more than willing to go along. The Doctor looked at her with a puzzled expression, but Jack laughed, "Yeah, certainly you could beat both of them on your own pinball game?" The Doctor grinned, "Quite right!" and got up from the table to chase the other two down. This left Jack and Jeanne sitting alone at the table. Jack just looked at her, sensing that she wanted him alone for a reason.

"Jack, I wanted to apologize for what happened in the control room when we met. Ardi explained to me about what she did to you, and she's very sorry about that. I can, well, sense that you're different." Jack shrugged, "I'm used to it by now, I've forgiven her and Rose for what they did, they had good intentions." Jeanne nodded, "It wasn't just that, though. You were flirting with me." Jack laughed, "Well, flirting is as natural as breathing to me, I flirt with everyone I meet, the Doctor didn't tell you?" She shook her head, "No, not really. It made me very uncomfortable because I just lost my husband two weeks ago." Jack didnt' say anything, just played with his tea cup before saying, "I'm sorry for your loss." Jeanne looked at him quizzically, "You already knew that didn't you? You've checked up on me." Jack looked up, and met her gaze. "Yes, I did. When one of my friends has been hurt as much as the Doctor, I want to watch out for him. He shows up out of the blue with a new passenger who isn't a travelling companion but is, there's something strange going on there."

Jeanne nodded. "From what Ardi has told me, losing Rose again and losing Donna hurt him a great deal, perhaps more than anything other than the loss of his people. So, he decided not to take on any more travelling companions. However, this left Ardi very lonely. His Companions are her Companions too, and she missed having someone to take care of besides the Doctor. She was lonely, and they found me when I was feeling very lonely." Jack leaned back in his chair, "So where did they find you?" Jeanne gave a slight smile, "Well, I was taking a walk through the woods, getting away from it all, when along came a spider - a large metallic one. The TARDIS scanners had detected it, some kind of alien probe, and he came to stop it from causing trouble. When I followed him into his ship, she spoke to me." Jack's eyebrows went up, "The old girl talks?"

A woman's voice came from the other end of the table, "Only to people I like and when I feel like it, dear Captain." Jeanne and Jack both turned to face the new voice, and there was Ardi sitting at the end of the table, smiling at them both. Jeanne frowned, "Are you sure its safe to be seen, the Doctor could return..." Ardi laughed, "Not if I've locked the door to the game room for 30 minutes, he can't." She turned to look at Jack and her face grew very serious. "Captain, you truly do forgive Rose and I for what we did to you?" Jack looked at her in surprise, "You're the TARDIS? You're beautiful!" Ardi laughed, "Well, yes and no, I'm the intelligence of the TARDIS, but I'm using the image of one of the Doctor's former companions. That's why Jeanne was worried, we don't want to upset him by appearing like this in front of him." Jack stood up and moved to the end of the table, and sat down, "Ardi, yes, I have forgiven you for what happened. It wasn't your fault, you and Rose did what you had to do to save the Doctor, what happened to me was an accident and I've learned to live with it. Over and over again, actually. It comes in very handy when dealing with these dangerous situations I find myself in working for Torchwood." Ardi smiled, "I hope that means we can be friends, Captain Jack." He grinned, "Of course, I'd never turn down the friendship of a beautiful woman!" He reached out for her hand and gave it a kiss. Jeanne smiled from her end of the table, happy that the slate had been wiped clean between these two.

She stood up, "You know, I'd love to show off Ardi's handiwork with my suite of rooms, why don't you come let me give you the grand tour?" Jack looked up at her, surprised, and she gave him a mock frown, "I'm just showing off her decorating skills, don't get any funny ideas!" He laughed, "Oh, I think you're going to be as good for the Doctor as you are for Ardi, Jeanne McCormick. After you." Ardi began to fade from view, "I'll see you both there." Jack stuck out an arm, and Jeanne slowly put hers through it, and verbally gave him directions to the entrance to her rooms. As they walked, she asked, "Tell me more about Rose, you knew her well?" Jack's face clouded over, "Yes, I travelled with her and the Doctor back in his 9th incarnation. Ardi has explained about regenerations to you, right?" Jeanne nodded, "So that would be grouchy big-ears?" Jack laughed, "Yes, that's him, the three of us met up in London in the middle of the Blitz during World War II and we travelled together for a time, up until I died. They left me behind on Earth, and it took me awhile but I met up with this Doctor and Martha later on for awhile. When I left their company, I started up with Torchwood. After we brought the Earth back to it's proper place in space, Mickey had come from the parallel universe where Rose had been living and chose to stay here, so I brought him onboard with Torchwood. Martha has been working sort of double duty between UNIT and Torchwood." Jeanne asked again, "But tell me about Rose. Why was she so special that it hurt so much to leave her behind?" Jack slowed his step before stopping and looking down at her, he smiled softly, "She was special because he loved her, probably the first woman he's loved in a long, long time. The two of them were connected somehow, they had something special, I could see it when they were together when we first met. I saw her with this incarnation only for a short time, but the connection was still there, even though they had been apart for a couple of years or so. She crossed the Void between two universes to find him again. It takes a special person to risk everything to do that." Jeanne nodded, "She does sound special, smart, and strong in spirit. Ardi has shown me bits and pieces of their travels together, sometimes she's limited in that she can only show me what she can see. Some of the rest she's filled in with what they told her. Apparently she makes an excellent diary." She laughed at Jack's surprised look, "Yes, something like a Time Lord's version of a Captain's Log, I guess. I don't even know if he realizes he does it, but he shares his memories of events with her and she records them. She won't show me the images of the memories, but tells me what happens as a story." Jack nods, "She is full of surprises, the TARDIS is." Jeanne nodded, "Yes, it's hard to reconcile sometimes the personality of Ardi with the power of the TARDIS. It'll take me awhile to get to used to them being one and the same, and I have a lot to learn."

When they reached her suite of rooms, Ardi was waiting for them, and they went through the grand tour again. Jack was very impressed at the stylish rooms and how quickly Ardi was able to put things together. He spent some time talking to her about her ability to move rooms around within herself, what her senses were. If it wasn't so friendly, you would have thought he was giving her the third degree. Ardi was happy to talk about herself and her abilities. Jeanne just followed behind, storing the information he extracted for further discussion. They started talking about her holographic image and the difficulty of not being able to be seen by the Doctor. Jeanne jumped in, "Ardi's limited to using images of people who have been within the TARDIS. That's mostly his companions and people that would hurt him. Do you think it'd be possible to get some images from you of strangers that she could use to create a face of her own?" Ardi and Jack stopped and looked at her, then at each other. Jack grinned, "I think that could be arrange, we have some sophisticated software for facial analysis, I don't see why you couldn't use it to build a unique face of your own." Ardi clapped her hands with excitement, "Can you bring it to me before we have to leave?" Jack nodded, "Not a problem, how much longer do you think you'll be refueling." Ardi's head tilted as she analyzed herself. "Another 36 hours or so should top off all of my fuel tanks and reserves." Jack nodded, I'll make sure to bring it over tomorrow so you can experiment with it before you leave, in case you need any help." Jack glanced at his watch. "It's getting late, we'd better go see what those guys have done to the Game Room and head for home."

Ardi faded from view and Jeanne and Jack started walking through the corridors again. Jeanne would feel an occassional tug telling her to make a turn. Jack followed her, knowing that the TARDIS moved the rooms about the room probably wasn't anywhere close to where he remembered it. They could hear the sound of laughter from well back in the corridor. They looked at each other and smiled, and hurried along until they were standing in the doorway to the Game Room. The room was filled with all sorts of different gaming systems, video games, pinball, billiards, computers, even a virtual reality pod! Jeanne's eyes grew wide, she couldn't wait to get a chance to play in here with Ardi while the Doctor was out and about. The three had been taking turns at the pinball game, and the Doctor was currently having his turn with Martha and Mickey cheering him on. They just watched from the doorway, not wanting to disturb him. After his game ended - with a new record high score - there were high fives all around before Jack called out, "It's getting late guys, we probably should head back home." They all walked to the control room and Martha and Mickey and Jack gave both the Doctor and Jeanne hugs goodbye. Jack said, "I'll stop by tomorrow, I've got a present for Ardi before you guys head out." The Doctor nodded, frowning, and Jack called out, "See you tomorrow, Ardi!" The TARDIS hummed in response, and Jack grinned. "Still got it..." then headed out the door. Jeanne couldn't contain the giggle, and the Doctor turned to look at her. "I can't believe him, flirting with a spaceship, he really will flirt with anything that moves!" The Doctor didn't even try to contain the cheesy grin, "Yeah, that's right. Well, did you have a good time?" Jeanne nodded, "Yes, your friends are really nice. Ardi likes them too, it was good to have them back on board even for a visit." The Doctor started fiddling with the control panels and Jeanne yawned, "Well, I'm off to bed, talk to you later, Doctor!" He nodded and waved absently, "Night Jeanne, sweet dreams." Jeanne hummed slightly under her breath as she made her way back to her rooms for her first night sleeping in her new home.

Home. That's what the TARDIS had quickly become to her, a new home. There was distance from the pain of her loss here, no friends or family trying to help but only making her more miserable. No one telling her that "it would get easier with time" or "time heals all wounds". These kinds of emotional wounds never heal, she could look at the Doctor and based on what little she knew about him, knew that he had many long-standing wounds based on losses in his life. He's learned to move on with his life despite that - hopefully he could teach her how to do that too. That knowledge and Ardi's affection were a healing balm to Jeanne's wounded spirit. For the first time since the accident, she climbed into bed and felt like she could sleep free of nightmares. And she did just that.


	9. Chapter 8

The next day Jeanne was up early, eager to see the software program that Jack was bringing for Ardi so she could create her own image to use for her holographic projections. Speaking to Ardi in her mind for too long gave her a headache, and she really wanted for Ardi to be able to interact with the Doctor like other people do. After grabbing a quick breakfast of banana pancakes (and wondering for the dozenth time why there were so many banana-based foods stocked in the pantry), she waited in the console room. She was surprised to find the Doctor wasn't in there, but glad too, in case Ardi needed to make an appearance. Ardi spoke to her, "_He's sleeping in the library for now, Time Lords don't need a lot of sleep generally, but he was overdue. He should stay asleep until we finish._" Jeanne nodded and waited for the knock on the door.

She went over and opened the door for Jack, who walked in carrying a CD in his hand. "Here it is! I had Mickey make a copy of it last night, and made sure it had every templated facial feature we have on file in it, so you've got plenty of raw materials to work with, Ardi." Ardi spoke to Jeanne who relayed the message, "Ardi says thank you, and please insert the disk into the slot on the console so she can start downloading the program." Jack walked over and quickly found the slot and dropped the CD in. As the console began to hum, they heard a shocked, "What?" from the doorway. Turning, they saw a confused Doctor standing in the doorway, his eyes blurry from sleep and his hair even more messy than normal. "What!?" He stormed over towards the console in anger and began punching at buttons. Jack backed away towards the outer door, while Jeanne backed away towards the inner door. "WHAT? What are you doing adding software to MY SHIP?" He punched a couple more buttons and gave first Jack and then Jeanne furious glares. "How dare you tamper with my ship? I knew it was a bad idea to let you on board, young lady, I should have known you'd be nothing but trouble. Now tell me, what the bloody hell did you just put into my ship, Jack?"

Ardi materialized in front of Jeanne and said softly, "He gave me the facial recognition software I asked for." The Doctor froze and turned slowly to face Ardi and whispered hoarsely, "Romana?" Jack and Jeanne both took this as a sign that it was time to leave, Jack leaving the TARDIS and Jeanne retreating back to her suite of rooms. The confrontation between Ardi and the Doctor needed to be done in private.

Ardi shook her head, "No, Doctor, I'm Ardi, the TARDIS, I'm only using the image of Romana to appear to you and speak with you because I don't have a face of my own. Jack was bringing me some Torchwood software so I could create my own face." He blinked several times and his mouth opened and closed a couple of times without saying anything before turning away, "Why are you using her image at all? Why do you need an image?" Ardi walked towards the captain's chair and sat down, arranging the white fabric of her dress over her legs, "Because Jeanne is more comfortable talking to me this way instead of telepathically, I needed an image. The only images I have available to use are those of people I've seen from all angles, which means people who have been inside of me, and that leaves me with..." The Doctor continued her sentence, "My previous incarnations or my companions." Ardi nodded. "My memory banks had been erased before you stole me from Gallifrey, I have no other images on file. I chose Romana because I liked the way she looked, but knew it would hurt you to see her image, so for me to use it in front of you wasn't acceptable. That's why I asked Jack last night at dinner to bring me the software." The Doctor began to pace, "I don't like the idea of Torchwood adding software to my ship." Ardi stood up and shouted, "I'm not YOUR SHIP, I'm Ardi! I'm not an inanimate object without intelligence and personality. I'm your companion, just like Romana was and Tegan was and Nyssa was, it's time you started to treat me like one! Just remember that while they left you, I've always been here!"

The Doctor whirled and stared at her, amazed to think that his ship was yelling at him. He was used to her expressing her displeasure through a small electrical jolt when he was repairing one of her circuits. She glared and stomped her foot, "Stop calling me your ship! You don't own me, you treated K-9 with more respect for his intelligence and ability than you ever did me. I can travel through the time vortex, and all he has is a little laser beam that shoots out of his nose! Now that I can act on my own, you're going to have to recognize me as an individual you interact with and not a machine or slave!" The Doctor frowned, "I've never thought of you as a slave," and Ardi interrupted, "No? Well how many times have you asked me where I've wanted to travel to? How much remorse did you feel when you had to jettison part of my body to escape the time loop when we were travelling to Castrovalva? We're all that is left of Gallifrey! You think I don't know how empty it feels? Did you know that all of the TARDIS ships were connected through the Eye of Harmony? I felt the death of every TARDIS just as you felt the death of every Time Lord during the Time War, did you ever once ask me how I was dealing with the pain and grief? No, it was always you.. you YOU! Well, NOT ANYMORE!" Ardi was practically screaming at him now, and her image shook with rage that appeared to be out of control.

Ardi stepped forward and waved a hand towards the console which began to hum and the rotor began to rise as the ship slipped into the vortex. The Doctor raised his eyebrows but said nothing, too much in shock to respond. He slowly moved around the console until it was he seated on the captain's chair, holding on to it for support. He said softly "You.... felt the TARDIS' die?" Ardi appeared to take a couple of deep breaths and nodded, "They were providing the last line of defense needed for us to get into position for the delta wave. They held the line as long as they could, and when the last one fell, we set off the wave. As soon as it was completed, I fled to try and save you, My Doctor. I burned half of my circuits and drained my energy banks almost completely to try and escape. I only barely made it out and you almost didn't. I remember you lay there on the floor of the console room, right over there, " and she pointed to the wall next to the door, "for the longest time, and I just kept waiting to see if you'd wake up or if I was going to be left all alone. Then the regeneration occurred and you still didn't get up and I was so afraid you weren't ever going to come back to me."

The Doctor sat with his head in his hands, remembering the feeling of waking up on the floor of the TARDIS and realizing that he had survived and his people had not, the complete and total emptiness within his mind where the rest of the Time Lords used to reside scared him into a state of near paralysis. Only when the smell of acrid smoke got to be too much did he realize that his ship hadn't escaped unscatched. It was as he slowly dragged himself to his feet that he realized his clothes didn't fit right and he must have regenerated. The TARDIS had taken herself to Cardiff and began to recharge herself on the rift. It was one of the first instances he could remember of the TARDIS acting on her own without taking instructions from a pilot. After changing into new clothes, he began the complicated process of repairing her. That was when he realized that she was regaining power and getting that power from the rift. It was then he switched to the Coral desktop, wanting to erase the old console room image completely. He encouraged the coral struts to grow and fill the room, they would provide extra things to hold on to when the ride got bumpy, and replaced the solid floor with metal grating that made it easy to get down into the inner workings of the TARDIS to make repairs. Without a home port to get additional spare parts, he'd have to jury rig a lot of circuits to get them operating again, at least to make the ship operational to allow him to travel to places where he could acquire necessary spare parts. It was as he was searching through the TARDIS to take stock of what he had that he realized the Eye of Harmony within the ship had shattered. That explained the need for re-energizing from the rift as the ship had lost her connection to Gallifrey just as he had. It had never occurred to him that losing that connection would hurt her as it did him.

"You're right." He tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling, "You're absolutely right, I was so caught up in my own pain and focused on repairing you so we could get moving again, I completely missed the fact that you would be feeling the same emptiness I was. I've not always treated you as a being of intelligence, I know when I first took you from Gallifrey you were a means to an end, but one that felt so right to me. After.... after the war, you and I were all that was left of Gallifrey and I think of you very protectively because of that. Losing you...." he took a deep breath before continuing in a hoarse whisper, "Losing you would destroy me. Losing Rose hurt, but losing you, I don't know how I'd go on without you." Ardi crossed her arms in front of her, "You've had to do it before, you'd do it again if you had to." He frowned and looked at her, "Not because I wanted to, but because you were lost to me!" She nodded, "But I always knew you'd find your way back to me somehow. I had to believe that, or I would go mad fearing that you'd walk out the door one day and never return to me." She walked around the console to stand in front of him and bent down so they were face to face, "We were the original Shiver and Shake before Rose came on board." The Doctor flinched at her reference to the companion he had loved so much and lost not once, but twice. She continued, "We've travelled across the universe, even through other universes, hundreds of years together. You kept inviting these strangers you'd come across to travel with us, did you ever ask me if I wanted them on board? Did I ever get to pick a travelling companion before Jeanne? Did you allow me to share in your grief with Tegan and Nyssa when Adric died?" He flinched again at the reminder of the young man who died far too young. "Did you ask me if there was a way to save Donna besides erasing her memories?" The Doctor turned away, biting at his lip. The thought that the TARDIS would have a solution he didn't obviously never occurring to him. "You've recognized my intelligence, you speak to me, and we could communicate telepathically, but did you ever once consider that I had thoughts and feelings just like the others you travelled with?" The Doctor had to be honest and slowly shook his head no.

She pulled back and walked away from him and stared at the console. "No, of course you didn't. I remember sitting in the shipyard, waiting to be decommissioned, and calling out for someone to save me. No one answered until you showed up, and before I knew what happened, we left Gallifrey with Susan. I didn't recognize I had these feelings inside of me either until I became the Bad Wolf with Rose. When you pulled the vortex out of her and gave it back to me, there was a piece of me left in her, and a piece of her added to me. Suddenly I began to understand things that didn't make sense before. I recognized pain, sadness, guilt, grief, not just as words but as feelings. I could put the two together and things began to make sense. I finally was able to understand what I was feeling was emotions and put words to them. It took Jeanne coming on board for me to be able to communicate properly." Ardi began to pace back and forth, much the way the Doctor did when he was thinking. "I was intelligent, but Rose gave me something I didn't have before." She stopped in front of the Doctor. "A soul. Now that I have that, I want as much of the rest of a life as I can get, including a face to call my own rather than borrowing the image of someone else. The software that Jack brought will allow me to do that, once I get a chance to experiment with it."

The Doctor had sat quietly listening to Ardi's speech and thinking back on the hundreds of years they'd travelled together. He tilted his head in thought, "So how are you able to project such a perfect image? When I created the Emergency Program hologram, the best I could do was a distorted image." She tilted her head to unconsciously match his, "When you used the sonic screwdriver on the hologram projectors to send the image through the tiny hole in the Void to Rose, you boosted their abilities. I was able to mimic those throughout the main rooms of the ship." The Doctor nodded, "And what about all of those times when you'd land somewhere other than where I was aiming for, was that deliberate?" She shook her head and smirked, "Nope", popping the "P" the way he did. "Pilot error every time. That's what happens when you have an unqualified pilot at the console." The Doctor stood up, "Now just a minute, just because I didn't pass the bloody test doesn't mean I'm not qualified! I've had hundred of years of practice flying you, that should show you something." Ardi raised one eyebrow and the smirk grew to a full smile, "Yes, that you don't learn very well even with lots of practice." The Doctor's eyes widened as he realized he had just been verbally teased by his ship, the ship, ... by Ardi. It was going to take a lot of getting used to having a ship that had a mind of her own and the ability to speak it. He swallowed before saying saying his thought aloud softly. She nodded, "I agree. You've been calling me "she" for years, but you've been thinking of me as an "it" all of that time. That changes now."

She moved around to the other side of the console. "The software has downloaded, I'm going to go visit Jeanne and start experimenting with my face. When I have some final possibilities I'll let you know so you can provide your input. Until then, we'll be staying in the vortex for awhile, so make yourself comfortable in the library or your room." Ardi turned to look at him, "See you later, My Doctor." Then her image faded from view. The Doctor sat down in the captain's chair, his head back in his hands, as he tried to figure out how to handle a ship under its own control rather than his.


	10. Chapter 9

_Author's Note: The story picks up again with the conclusion of "The End of Time", and explains why the swimming pool ended up in the library. ;)  
_

Ardi couldn't believe the amount of strength her Doctor was showing by holding the radiation in that was killing him, holding back the regeneration energy that would save him, until he had one last moment with his precious companions. Finally, he could hold it back no more, and with a heart-breaking, "I don't want to go..." he exploded in fire. The energy was so intense, it shot into the walls of the console room, and the console itself, setting it ablaze. Ardi screamed in pain and the TARDIS began to rock back and forth unsteadily as the Doctor's regeneration continued.

Jeanne was holding on for dear life to her bed in her room when Ardi appeared, an uneven image filled with static, "Hang on!". Jeanne cried out, "What's happening?" "I'm crashing!" was all that Ardi could say before her image disappeared, and the room began to tilt to one side and the next. Fearful of being flipped out of the bed and squashed by a piece of furniture, she made her way to the short hallway between her bedroom and the library. Closing the door to her room and locking it, she held on to the handle for dear life, letting her body sway and move with the shaking ship. Finally, it began to tilt back, back back, until she was hanging from the latch of the door. She prayed her group would hold, but could feel it slipping. Glancing down, she was alarmed to see the other door to the library had fallen open, and the fall just got a whole lot longer. When she couldn't hold on anymore, she slipped down and screamed as she fell down... down... down... and SPLASHED!

The Doctor's regeneration finished and he began an inspection of his new not-ginger self before he remembered something rather important - that they were on fire and crashing! He tried a few switches and then resigned himself to holding on, and looking up, shouted, "Geronimo!" as the ship went in for a crash landing somewhere on Earth.

Jeanne swam up, sputtering for air, to find the TARDIS had stopped its crazy movements, the entire library was tilted on its side, and the swimming pool was in the wall, filled with water, and had caught her fall. Ardi's image appeared for just a moment, "Sorry, best I could come up with on short notice, must access the damage." Jeanne swam toward the edge of the pool, grabbing a hold of books that had fallen in the water in her wake and set them on the side of the pool before climbing out and sitting on the edge. Feeling secure enough in her perch for now, she looked around at the damage, and the faint smell of smoke was in the air. She hoped the Doctor and Ardi weren't badly hurt! With the room tilted this way, she couldn't easily access any of the doors, so she decided to wait for some assistance.


End file.
